The firing continued from daybreak till noon, and even then the result seemed doubtful, for when the adventurers approached the walls with their grenades to burn the doors the defenders threw down upon them earthen pots full of powder, and lighted by a fusee, together with showers of stones and other missiles. Morgan himself began to despair of success, and did not know how to escape from that strait, when the English flag arose above the smaller fort, and a troop of men ran forth to proclaim victory with shouts of joy. The remaining castle, however, was the pièce de resistance, being the storehouse of the church plate, and the wealth of the richer citizens now with the garrison. A stratagem was suggested, appealing strongly to Spanish superstition, and, as it happened, successfully. Ten or twelve ladders were made so broad and strong that three or four men might mount them abreast. To all threats the governor replied he would never surrender alive, although the religious should themselves plant the ladders. The monks and nuns were then dragged to the heads of the companies, and forced to plant the ladders, in spite of the hot rain of fire and shot; the governor "using his utmost endeavours to destroy all who came near the walls, firing on the servants of God, although his kinsmen, and prisoners, and forced to the service. Delicate women and aged men were goaded at the sword's point to this hateful labour, derided by the English, and unpitied by their countrymen."
All this time the Buccaneers maintained an unceasing fire along the whole line of grey battlements at every aperture where a pike head glittered or a lighted match smouldered; suffering much in return, unarmed as they were, guarded neither by steel-cap nor cuirass, and unsheltered by palisade or earthwork. In spite of the cries of the religious as they reared the ladders, their prayers to the saints, and their entreaties to the garrison to remember their common blood and nation, many of the priests were shot before the walls could be scaled. The more superstitious of the Spaniards were unnerved at hearing the dying curse of the consecrated servants of God, rising shrill above the roar of the battle. The ladders were at last planted, amid a shower of fire-pots that killed almost as many of the Spaniards as the English, and the Buccaneers sprang up with all the agility of sailors and the determination of Berserkers; their best marksmen shooting down the few Spaniards who awaited their arrival at the summit. Their falling bodies struck a few Buccaneers from their ladders. Every man that went up carried hand grenades, pistols, and sabre, but the musket was now laid aside, for it had done its work, and was a mere encumbrance in the grapple of closer combat. The English swarmed up in great numbers, and reaching the top kindled their fusees and threw down their fire-pots upon the crowded ranks of the enemy, with destructive effect. Before they could recover their dismay, sabre in hand, as if they were boarding, they leaped down upon the garrison, who drove them off with pikes and clubbed muskets, and, closing with them, hurled many from the ramparts, or, stabbing them, fell clenched with the foe in their despair. When their cannon was taken, the Spaniards threw down their arms and begged for quarter, except the governor and a few officers, who determined to die fighting against the robbers and heretics, the enemies of God and Spain.
The Buccaneers, seeing the red flag flying from the first fort, which was the strongest, and built on an eminence which commanded the towers below, advanced with confidence to the attack of the remaining one, hitherto thought impregnable, which defended the port, and prevented the entrance of their vessels, which they wished to secure safe in the harbour, as the number of their wounded would require their long stay in the place they had captured. The governor, proud and brave, still refused to surrender, and fired upon them with his cannon, which were soon silenced by the superior fire of the newly-taken fort, which flanked his position. Out of this last stronghold, the weary and despairing defenders were quickly driven.
Major Castellon, the stout-hearted governor, disdaining to ask quarter of a pack of heretic seamen, killed several of his own men who would not stand to their arms and called on him to save their lives, and struck down many of the hunters who tried to take him alive, not from a generous compassion, for pity seldom entered a Buccaneer's heart, but in order to obtain his ransom. A still more cruel trial of his courage, and duty to his king, awaited him: his wife and children fell at his knees, and, with cries and tears, begged him to lay down his arms and save both their lives. But he obstinately and sternly refused, replying, "Better this than a scaffold," preferring to die as a valiant soldier at his post, than to be hanged as a coward for deserting it. He died the death of a brave man, fighting desperately, and was found buried under the bodies of his dead enemies. If unpitied by his ferocious foes, he has left a name to be honoured by all brave men, as one worthy of a more chivalrous age, and a better cause.
It now being nearly sunset, and the city their own, the adventurers enclosed all their prisoners in the citadel, separating the wounded, and, although heedless of their sufferings, employing the female slaves to wait upon them. It now being nearly night, they gave way to all the excesses of soldiers in a town taken by storm, exasperated by the recollection of past danger, and the death of friends, and maddened by both the certainty of present pleasure and the power of indulging in every success. Œxmelin says, fifty brave Spaniards might have put all the revellers to death, and recovered the place. We do not, however, hear that a single Spanish Jael was found to revenge herself on these modern Siseras.
The following morning Morgan summoned his vessels into the harbour, and collecting all the loose wealth of the town, had it brought into the fort. Directing the repairs of the ramparts, scorched and shattered, he remounted the guns, in order to be ready to repel any attack from Panama. He collected a few of the prisoners who had been persuaded to say they were the richest merchants in Porto Bello, and put all who would not confess to the torture. He maimed some and killed others, who remained silent because they were in reality poor, and had concealed no treasure. Having spent fifteen days in these alternate cruelties and debaucheries, Morgan resolved to retreat. No Buccaneer general had ever taken a city which could not be stripped clean in fourteen days. Famine and disease began ungratefully to take the part of the Spaniard against the nation that had fed them with so many victims. Wild waste compelled them already to devour their mules and horses, rather than die of hunger, or turn cannibals. Parties of hunters were sent into the suburbs to hunt the cattle, whose flesh they then devoured, saving the mules for the prisoners, who, between their wounds and their hunger, were reduced to dreadful extremities.
A death more terrible than that of a blow in battle now appeared in their midst. Many had already died victims of excess, and even the most prudent perished. The bad food, the sudden transition from excess to want, and the impurity of the tainted air, produced a pestilence. The climate of Porto Bello, always unhealthy, as Hosier's squadron afterwards experienced, was poisoned by the putrefaction of the dead bodies, hastily buried, and scarcely covered by earth. The wounded nearly all sickened, and the intemperate were the first to die.
The prisoners, crowded together, and already weakened mentally by despondency, and physically by famine, soon caught the fever, and died with dreadful rapidity. Rich merchants, accustomed to every luxury, and to the most varied and seasoned food, pined under a diet of half-putrid mule's flesh, and bad, unfiltered water. Everything warned Morgan that it was time to weigh anchor, for the president of Panama was already on his march towards the city at the head of 1500 men. Informed of their approach from a slave captured by a hunting party, Morgan held a council, at which it was agreed not to retreat until they had obtained a ransom for the town greater than the spoil at present collected; and, in order to prevent a surprise, he placed a body of 100 well-armed men in a narrow defile, where but a few men could go abreast, and through which the president must pass. They found that that general had fewer troops with him than was reported, and these took flight at the first encounter, and did not attempt again to force a passage, but waited for reinforcements. The president, with the usual gasconade of a Spaniard, sent word to Morgan, that if he did not at once leave Porto Bello he should receive no quarter when he should take him and his companions, as he hoped soon to do.
To this, Morgan, knowing he had a sure means of escape, said he should not leave till he had received 180,000 pieces of eight as a ransom for the city, and if he could not get this he should kill all his prisoners, blow up the castle, and burn the town, and two men were sent by him to the president to procure the money.
The president, seeing that nothing could either deceive or intimidate Morgan, gave up Porto Bello to its fate, not caring to erect a silver bridge for a flying enemy. In vain he sent to Carthagena for a fleet to block up the ships in the river; in vain he kept the citizens in suspense as to the money, in hopes of gaining time. He was deaf and obdurate to all the entreaties of the citizens, who sent to inform him that the pirates were not men but devils, and that they fought with such fury that the Spanish officers had stabbed themselves, in very despair, at seeing a supposed impregnable fortress taken by a handful of people, when it should have held out against twice the number.